Thursday, March 20, 2014

Kraftwerk in 3D!

Those are the chopstick-sachet style packets for the 3-D glasses provided at the Kraftwerk concerts last night at the Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles.

Big up to Wilson Neate, my benefactor. Below is his pic of Ralf Hutter at performance's end, last to leave the stage after taking his bow:

A near-religious experience, of course. To hear "The Hall of Mirrors", "Metal on Metal", "Neon Lights" and (during the greatest hits part of each concert), "Autobahn", "It's More Fun To Compute", "Computer Love", "Tour De France".... at such vivid volume.... An uncommon elevation.

And those 3D projections..... "Amaaaaaazing visuals, man!"

This is actually the third occasion I've seen Kraftwerk, which in gig-frequency puts them only slightly behind the Pixies and The Shamen (no really, and let's just say, it wasn't always by choice: they seemed to be on a lot of bills back in the late 80s).

The second time was in New York when they were doing their first tour of North America in decades. I was working at Spin then and organised a mega-feature (starts page 114) based around the concept of Kraftwerk's autobahn ride through pop history, with exit ramps leading to areas of influence. The design team did a really nice job with that.

Also found myself in the strange position of having to edit Lester Bangs - the higher-ups felt that an interview with Hutter & Co was essential, but the group weren't giving any, so I went to the archives. Naturally, word-counts not being as sprawling as in the 1970s, cuts were demanded. The Estate of LB was totally cool about it. But seldom have I felt such trepidation as when I approached the sacred text with a scalpel...